Last week’s release of Firefox 18.0 saw the not-for-profit browser gaining “preliminary” support for a technology called WebRTC. Folk downloading the browser afresh or updating from a previous release may have been keener on Firefox’s new support for Apple’s “retina” displays or the browser’s promised JavaScript performance leap …

Re: WebRTC==Wannabes encouraging boys Reacting To Crap

I built an internal app in about 20 minutes that allows the scanning of pages via a webcam.....

So that's one moderately-useful application (though I have to wonder what the audience is - what's the intersection of people who want to do this, with those who own a webcam, with those who don't own a scanner, with those who don't own a smartphone with a capable camera?), versus the half-dozen awful ones mentioned in the article.

Color me unconvinced. Of course, I'll use NoScript and the like to block it anyway. I start using new technologies when they solve problems for me, not when someone tells me how great they are.

A Quiet Worldly Word to the Wise ..... is Worth a Thousand Pictures?

To win hearts and minds in virtual battles with smarter intelligence feed and novel cyber seed is the game-changer it and IT can and therefore will be used for, Wish You Were Here, and in so doing will IT drag the present into a braver new orderly world future with live information one can actively query.

Although to be sure will fools and tools also use it for pornography and interactive smut but that is an ancient physical ingredient which wins no virtual battles and delivers nothing at all new and definitely identifies one and all in such self-centred communication as sub-prime?

Indeed, you can be assured that it has been successfully trialed to deliver what is required and now just needs introduction to global markets with their millions/billions of state and non-state actor players.

Such is certainly what HyperRadioProActive IT is using it for in the field, and in the teeming and streaming more irregular and unconventional fields of AIR&dDevelopment with alien terrain teams.

The Great Game is changed, and one needs to to get one's head around the new natural super order of such virtual things to give oneself every chance of being successful and effective and not be a loser in Live Operational Virtual Environments, which in earlier times and other places are labelled and pimped and dumped on humanity as Reality.

To imagine it otherwise and not to be so [or to not imagine it possible at all with Command and Control in IT] is to be in a delusional state of debilitating denial/self-denial.

Used for in-browser green screen

Re: Used for in-browser green screen

Christmas eve eve, I did a little experiment with getUserMedia to show snow falling on top of the webcam feed, and have it settle on any horizontal edges. Didn't take that long and I thought it was pretty cool, considering its just some JavaScript and a dash of CSS.

Once it all gets finalised and secured properly, it's going to make for some cool stuff being built - lots of nice interactivity without having to resort to Flash.

"Maximum Disruption" hardly describes it

It might be "impossible to say how", but I'll bet I can take a really good SWAG:

At this stage, it’s impossible to say how this will affect existing voice and video communications services. It’s tempting, for instance, to forecast WebRTC will give mobile phone network operators and VoIP players like Skype a hiding, by allowing people to communicate easily over channels they don’t control - or, crucially, don’t obtain revenue from...

...and, of course, pester the living shit out of the rest of us with even more annoying advertising.

Re: Sounds like something that can only end badly

"WebRTC... comprises browser code that Google open sourced back in June 2011 and which implements an emerging standard API being developed co-operatively by web standards bodies the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)"

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

"[Microsoft] maintains it wants to make WebRTC more flexible… That makes the technology more readily adaptable to a given developer’s needs, but it also limits interoperability."

Good to see that some parts of Microsoft are still up to their old tricks.

I suspect that one reason SIP never caught on is that it allows a bewildering array of codecs. If you have a SIP client from one vendor and want to communicate with a SIP client from another vendor, you have to carry so many codecs, most of them patented. Skype is just simpler to use and more reliable. So, I see Microsoft is trying to preserve the value of the investment in Skype.

So lets get this straight

Whilst browsing the support docs to fix an obscure issue with some industry trailing backup project I get a chap named Edgar with an Indian accent coming online to read me a script that asks have you inserted a clean tape in HiDef?

Or while I'm researching a piece of software I get a greasy pimp offering me half a dozen exceptional candidates with 100 years experience in Microswear server server 2021.

New and improved Chatroulette?

As far as I know Chatroulette implemented this using Flash - so video and sounds of .. monkeys being spanked, chickens choked etc where transmitted peer to peer. Not sure it worked that well.. after a quick look at what was on offer on the cr site, I backed out of there pretty quickly. (Really quickly, honestly).

So WebRTC will be used extensively by the ummh, 'commercial' webcam industry to allow consenting adults to exchange the kind of images you really don't want to be streamed from a centralised server. Could be another avenue for enterprising pirates as well to exchange streaming video peer to peer..

See The Demo

For those liking to see this in useful action, here is a video demo that a couple Firefox devs made with WebRTC.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6-rAv6bU8Q

A couple notes about the video:

- The split screen effect is achieved through the video capture software & has nothing to do with WebRTC.

- The sidebar and persistent hovering video is achieve through the Social API and only used to better demo WebRTC.

- One thing they didn't demo was permissions. Just like when a website wants your location, you have the option to allow for now, allow always, never or ignore (aka "not now"). So not only would a network/user need permission to connect to you, they would need permission to share different types of data with you.